


i'd like it if you stayed

by Nyxierose



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Backstory, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 04:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18045776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxierose/pseuds/Nyxierose
Summary: "They're always okay, in the end."





	i'd like it if you stayed

**Author's Note:**

> These babes need fluff, so here we are. Apologies if I screwed up any pieces of their backstory, but I wanted to do something realistically cute from her POV.
> 
> Title and slight inspo from "400 Lux" by Lorde. Which is not a song I thought would work so well for them.

See, the thing is, Eudora always thought she'd settle down with someone _nice_. And in the end that's what happens, but not at all how she expects.

She's twenty-two and clawing her way through the police academy, such a perfectionist because a woman who looks like she does damn well _has_ to be, and she doesn't have time or energy for so much as a crush. Especially not on a classmate. Especially not on _that_ classmate, who shows back up after winter break with a hell of a scar on his head that he refuses to explain to anybody.

A week after that, he gets kicked out for being too stubborn. Against her better judgment, Eudora decides she cares.

She doesn't really have time for friends either, but she's slowly going stir-crazy and she's not sure how she's going to make it through the rest of the program without some kind of human connection, and she sees something in there that makes her think he needs that too. Diego, who probably got red-flagged as soon as their instructors noticed the utter terror on his face whenever his last name was mentioned, who got kicked out for being too much of a _person_. It doesn't take much for her to find his address, and she's not sure how well he'll take a casual acquaintance randomly showing up at his apartment but only one way to find out.

She's not sure what she expects when she knocks on the door. She's surprised enough when it opens. Even more so when she sees him smile for the first time.

"W-what are you doing here?" he asks, bracing himself against the doorframe like he's not sure what's about to go wrong.

Yeah. She should've thought about this better. She should've _called_ , but she didn't so time to improvise.

"Wanted to make sure you were alright after what happened last week."

They're not friends. They've had exactly three totally voluntary conversations and two of those were _very_ focused on what they were learning in their class that week. And Eudora has learned to have no expectations when dealing with people she finds attractive (and she can admit _that_ , at least). But she's curious and lonely and that's a bad mix, and-

He steps back, opens the door further, motions for her to come in.

"It's not much but… thank you. For being here."

"I'm kinda surprised you didn't freak out on me," she laughs. He's easy to talk to, she decides. She likes that.

"You were nice when stuff came up," he shrugs. "You didn't make your judgments based on things that aren't me."

She rolls her eyes. She heard all the commentary when all of _that_ came out into the open - former teenage superhero gone muggle is apparently fair game for the idiot gorillas that make up the majority of her classmates - and didn't really think about it at the time. So Diego has a weird background. Whatever. The humanity was mutual, his eyes and hands stayed in respectful places when they practiced hand-to-hand combat - hell, she picked him as a partner because she knew he'd be decent to her. Everybody's got their demons. He hasn't let his win. What more is she supposed to care about.

"And you're aware of where my eyes actually are," she mutters, trying to clear the air. "I think that's a starting point."

She ends up on his absolutely-a-torture-device couch, somehow, and they end up talking for hours about stuff that matters and stuff that doesn't, and she decides as she realizes it's getting late and she should get home that she definitely has a bit of a crush on him.

"I'll walk you home," he offers.

"I can protect myself. And it'd be a hell of a walk. Easier to take the bus."

"You sure?"

"I'll call you when I get home. Is that a good compromise?"

It is. She does. She could get used to this.

The rest of police training goes smoothly, made easier by her new outlet. Sunday afternoons, she goes over to that basement apartment and they hang out and it's the most innocent and most fun thing she's done in a long while. As she should've expected, Diego's cultural background is nonexistent and she makes it her personal mission to make him watch all the fun-terrible movies she and her sisters loved when they were younger (and still do love - a weakness for intentionally bad movies is an integral part of Patch DNA, right under an inclination towards emotionally exhausting careers). In return… she's not sure what he gets out of their blossoming dynamic, but she starts to suspect she's the only actual friend he has.

Eudora is not a fixer. She doesn't want to be anybody's tether to reality. And from what she can tell, as weeks turn to months, Diego _really_ needs a tether. She's not signing up for that. Not intentionally.

But god, his face lights up when she says something nice about him and she's starting to suspect he's got even more emotional scars than physical ones, and she thinks she could make a life out of those moments.

She graduates in the spring and gets hired soon after, and for a couple months it seems like everything in her life is going according to perfect plan. She turns twenty-three and goes out with her sisters because that's what she's got for female friends right now, and she has her routines, and she thinks she's happy but she's not totally sure, and-

The Sunday afternoon routine continues, until one day in late summer he's in terrible condition and won't talk about it. It takes Eudora an unfortunate few minutes to figure out that _maybe_ her friend's new collection of bruises _might_ have something to do with some of the intermittent static on the radio last night.

"Stay fucking still," she mutters as she goes in search of… honestly, any first-aid materials she can find. Which she does _not_ find, because of course this beautiful dumbass doesn't have so much as a box of bandaids anywhere in his living space. Thankfully she's got a few in her purse, but she is decidedly unimpressed and-

"I-I'm fine," he hisses as she cleans a cut on his hand with the contents of a mystery bottle that smells rather like vodka. (It's what she can find. She's improvising.)

"You're an idiot," she corrects. "You can't just do… whatever it is you did." She knows darn well what happened, but she can pretend otherwise. She has learned, is learning that he reveals information in his own time. Best not to push.

"Why do you care?"

She answers with her mouth on his, tasting his shock for a moment before he opens up to her. Oh, she'd suspected there was potential but it is different underneath her, different as she realizes she was wrong about a few things.

"You've never done that before," she breathes. They're inches apart.

"No."

"Was it okay?"

He pulls her down and gives an answer of his own, and he learns quickly.

They drift for a few months, undefined, slowly growing closer. On occasion, on midweek nights, he starts showing up at her apartment. She appreciates this development; it's more comfortable to bring him into her spaces, fall asleep in her bed with him next to her, get used to doing things like the normal people they aren't. He becomes home to her, and she begins to learn his body and his nightmares. A good man who has _become_ good out of his own stubbornness more than anything else, and she admires that. Her own determination, valid as it is, feels lesser by comparison.

And then, about a year after they begin, they have their first fight.

Well, actually a two-part fight. The first part happens in front of way too many people, because vigilante antics _occasionally_ do not end before flashing lights and sirens get there and she's not admitting she knows the jackass in the mask but she's definitely less than thrilled with them. The second, a couple hours later, in the privacy of his apartment and much more intense.

"You can't do that," she hisses. "You can't just-"

"I was doing the right thing."

"By your own hand! Your knives aren't gonna save you from some asshole with a gun!"

"I know what I'm doing."

"That's the problem. You _know_."

Eudora walks away and doesn't see him for a month.

She plans on it being longer. A lot longer, if at all possible. But then one night she's having trouble sleeping, wanders out to the main room of her apartment to make some tea in an attempt at calming her mind, and there's someone on the fucking fire escape and she is not anywhere near as worried as she ought to be because she recognizes those features in the moonlight.

She should ignore the issue. Let him freeze out there. She shouldn't care, she has no desire to get widowed young and that's where any entanglement with that man will end up, she is absolutely sure of it. But it's one in the damn morning, and she can't imagine he's come 'round to apologize for being a dick, and she figures she might as well see what he actually wants and then ask him to leave through the front door like a civilized person.

"I couldn't save them."

She's not gonna ask. There's too much weight in his voice, and she suspects she'll hear a recap in a few days from whichever of her coworkers gets stuck with the fallout. Right now what matters is dealing with the innocent bystander, as she suspects Diego ultimately is this time.

"You're safe here," she murmurs. "You can keep me safe."

"What if I can't?"

"I have a gun under my mattress. I'm not afraid of anything."

He stays in her bed for almost three days. Whatever happened - she never does get that recap - was traumatic for him. She doesn't ask, just lets him be. All she can ever do.

Years begin to pass in that pattern. They'll be good for a few months, friends and lovers and beautifully undefined, and then he'll get in her way at work and she'll get mad and shut him out for a few weeks until they both calm down. Or some emotional line will get crossed, one of the traumas he's not talking about, and he'll be the one to cause the distance. Every time, she knows they'll come back to each other once their blood cools down. They always do.

The worst fight, the one that keeps him away for three months, happens when she's twenty-seven and she decides she wants a future with him. Wants kids, specifically, because she thinks they'd be decent parents.

He doesn't agree. He does, over several hours, explain exactly why that is. And then he leaves.

For several months, she doesn't even hear static about him.

Eventually, curiosity wins out. Eventually she wanders down to the shitty basement apartment she hasn't been to in almost a year, because she knows he's not dead but he might be close, and decides to fix what she broke.

"I have faith in you," she says towards the end of her apology. "I have faith that you and I could figure out how to do all the normal things."

"I'm not good at normal, Dora." He's the only person she's ever let call her that, and it makes her just a little melty.

"You're getting better at it. You haven't talked shit about my knife rule in six months, my parents like you…"

"I think your parents are happy you brought home _anyone_."

"Valid, but they were not that nice to Maria's latest ex-girlfriend. You don't wanna know."

And just like that, they're okay. They're always okay, in the end.

They're okay, three years later, when Eudora gets hit in the head with god-knows-what and loses a week of her life.

She wakes up in a hospital room, not the first time this has happened to her but damn there are a lot of wires attached to her body, and a very panicked sort-of-recurrent-boyfriend by her side.

"What happened?" she asks when she feels like she can do words.

He doesn't answer with his voice. Can't. Just looks at her like she's the most important thing in his life, and she's known for years that she _is_ but it's different like this, and it's enough.

"I'm not going anywhere," she murmurs. "You need me too much."

See, the thing is, Eudora isn't totally sure how to handle a longterm relationship that doesn't take pauses because of petty fights every couple months. But she thinks, as she recovers and slowly learns the story of how the chaotically dysfunctional Hargreeves clan both caused and averted the apocalypse, that she could learn. She could do a lot of things.

"Stay this time," she suggests two weeks later, when she's functional enough to do the rest of her recovery in her own apartment sans complicated equipment.

Diego looks like something's just run him over, but emotionally as opposed to the physical default.

"I will," he replies. "Someone's gotta take care of you."


End file.
